Slashdot Mirror


Online Bookstores for Technical Books?

Bookwork asks: "I'm looking for a decent (read: reliable and cheap) online book retailer that has a good selection of technical books, particularly computing related ones. So far the best I've come up with is bookpool.com, but I don't know much about them. If anyone has suggestions for decent online technical bookstores, I'd love to hear about them. The reason I'm asking this here is I guess many of you would purchase these sorts of books also, and may have some suggestions - I'm in the throws of building a collection of books such as those recommended on places like here."

13 of 17 comments (clear)

  1. Here's one.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    You can check out books24x7.com - they have a decent selection of IT-type books, but not so much hardcore programming stuff. I think you can search for free, but actually reading them requires an exchange of a monetary quantity.

  2. Can't beat Powell's Tech Books by 198348726583297634 · · Score: 2
    They have a great physical presence, but since most of the salshdot crowd won't be in portland, check em out online:

    Powells - disclaimer: I used to work for them. They have more obscure merchandise than you can shake a stick at, so if you ever need an old math or engineering text, try em out.

    (yeah, I'm a shill- but that's what this topic's about)

  3. OPAMP by TheZork · · Score: 2
    http://opamp.com/

    One of the best technical bookstores in Los Angeles. It's a lot of fun to browse the store, and now they're on the Web. They claim to beat Amazon's prices, too.

  4. Page 1 books by OmegaDan · · Score: 2

    I've always had good service from pageonebook.com ... they carry alot of technical titles, they even have used versions of some.

  5. bookpool.com by joedumb · · Score: 2

    bookpool.com has pretty good prices

  6. was looking for same by bluelip · · Score: 2

    I used to look for the cheapest books I could find to gather as much knowledge as possible. I then found nearly all of the technical info I needed on the net. It takes some time to get used to reading in a different format, but it's nice once you do. I also don't buy too many magazines since their is an online "community" for everything now-a-days.

    --

    Yep, I never spell check.
    More incorrect spellings can be found he
  7. Suggested on-line technical bookstores by chipuni · · Score: 2

    The two that I like for their RL bookstores are digitalguru.com and fatbrain.com . However, if you're just looking for online bookstores, you can find a list in the usual place .

    --
    Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
  8. FatBrain by JamesA · · Score: 2
    www.fatbrain.com has a great selection of technical materials.

    - James

  9. Additional suggestion by decesare · · Score: 2

    www.softpro.com would be another place to check out. They have stores in Massachusetts and Colorado, but do online orders, as well.

  10. Ummm. by Spackler · · Score: 2

    Amazon. Yeah, I know that sounds like a "duh" kind of answer, but they carry pretty much any book that is talked about on slashdot, and the prices will be better than your local B&N or Borders. Sombody mentioned a Perl Algorthm book here that might be helpful to me. Amazon had it in stock and I had it the next day at my work.

  11. Free online alternatives to expensive paper books by sachachua · · Score: 2
    Paper books are often useful (pretty pictures, reading code in the bathroom or in bed), but I'm on a student's ultra-tight budget, so I tend to prefer free electronic books whenever possible.

    I find that Hogan Books (http://hoganbooks.com/freebook/webbooks.html) lists quite a lot of free books on the Web. The search engine makes it even more useful.

    Many of the entries come from InformIT (http://www.informit.com/), which has a pretty good free library.

    Then there's the Linux Documentation Project (http://www.linuxdoc.org) for Linux-specific things.

    Of course there's also all the other documentation on the Net. Search engines are wonderful.

    Not quite computer-related but also worth checking out are Project Gutenberg (http://promo.net/pg/), the Internet Public Library (http://www.ipl.org/reading/books/index.html) and the UPenn Digital Library (http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/lists.html ). Mostly classics and other things whose copyrights have expired, but you have a couple of new books here too. General reading material - bookworm fare. =)

    Yes, I know, you were looking for paper copies, and a lot of interesting information isn't available online. But it's worth checking out anyway. =)

  12. Great deals on tech books by Theta116 · · Score: 2

    try http://www.a1books.com They actually are cheaper than most other book places

  13. safari.ora.com by DAldredge · · Score: 3

    Try safari.ora.com. It is an online only (html based) subscription service where you subscribe to X number of books per month for Y dollars. Each month you can chose new book. It's a pretty cool service.